A group of 19 Christian and Jewish leaders of the Long Island religious community has appealed to Soviet Premier Aleksei N. Kosygin “for the prompt release of the Jewish prisoners in your country who have fervently expressed their desire to go to Israel,” It was reported by the Long Island Committee for Soviet Jewry. The interfaith group expressed particular concern over the plight of Sylva Zalmanson Kuznetsov whose “strict regime” imprisonment was termed by the religious leaders “a direct threat to her life.”
The interfaith group entreated the Soviet government “to let humanitarian considerations alone guide it in granting freedom to those prisoners so that they may depart to Israel where their people await them.” A copy of the appeal was sent to President Nixon who will be visiting the USSR next month. Last fall, the Committee for Soviet Jewry sponsored an interfaith clergy rally to protest the persecution of Roman Catholic priests by Soviet authorities in Lithuania.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
